Simi Valley High is reminding people there was more than one good boys soccer team in the Marmonte League this season.

Senior Brandon Esswein scored the tiebreaking goal Tuesday night to give Simi Valley a 2-1 win over visiting Fullerton in the second round of the CIF-Southern Section Division 2 playoffs.

The victory put the Pioneers' record at 15-6-3 and moved them into Thursday's quarterfinal round against Corona, which defeated Fontana 4-3 Tuesday.

"This is a huge turnaround for our program," coach Tim Clunen said. "We won only seven games last year and to win 15 this year (is amazing). This is our second year as a coaching staff here and the boys have done an incredible job, putting in the work and buying into what we're trying to put together."

But even when Simi Valley is playing teams from faraway Orange County in the playoffs, the Pioneers' thoughts are not very far away from rival Royal, which won the league title this season with a 14-0-0 record and is the top seed in the playoffs. After Simi Valley's win and Royal 3-1 victory over ML King, it's not inconceivable to think the CIF-SS championship game could be an intracity contest.

"Royal's a very good team," Clunen said. "All these boys play on the same club teams and on the same AYSO teams when they were kids. They're all friends with each other. Royal has a great program and they've had a great year. We feel we can hang with them. We feel we are one of the top teams in the area. There's a little bit of a chip on our shoulder. That's kind of the Simi way."

Simi Valley did an impressive job of hanging with Fullerton, which finished 19-4-3 and won the Freeway League. The Pioneers scored the game's first goal at the 12-minute mark when senior Trevor Kuehnel scored his team-leading ninth goal of the season. He took the ball on the left side, displayed some fancy footwork to weave around defenders and finally put it past Indians goalie Guillermo Jimenez.

In fact, Kuehnel may have displayed almost too much fancy footwork.

"I just took the first guy on, cut back on him, took the second guy on and then after that, a lot of (Royal) players actually got mad at me because they were open for the 45, but I saw the keeper's legs open, so I decided I'd slide it through."

Simi Valley held the 1-0 lead at halftime, but six minutes into the second half, Fullerton tied the game on a goal by Michael Licon. The Indians had missed an opportunity on a corner kick, but the Pioneers couldn't clear the ball out and Licon grabbed it and scored.

"Usually, we'll get down," Kuehnel said, "but for some reason, when they tied it up, I had a feeling we were going to come back. I just felt that. We were playing so good that we could definitely come back."

Sure enough, midway through the second half, a corner kick by senior Josue Reano was headed into the net by Esswein, a defender, to give Simi the winning margin.

"Usually on corner kicks, they have me go up because I'm usually good at winning headers, as you can see on defense," Esswein said, "and the person who kicked it (Reano) plays for my club team and he knows to always look for me because on my club I have, like, five goals like that. We're teammates, we love working with each other and it was great getting a goal to help us win the game."